playing games on a PC, misc. chatter, Steam names, etc...

No, it's not good casual gaming at all. It is one of the best games ever made tho, so stick with it.

Seriously, it's awesome. Has your standard Bioware/Black Isle initial tutorial level ramp-ups, but eventually gets into proper gear.

heh the last time I rolled dice was in some IRC channel 10 years ago :/ tbh I find the whole range of available options to be mind-numbing, I spazzed out for like half an hour during the initial stat point distribution. looked at some of the available guides online and was overwhelmed by all the info. :\

ok I finally sorted out that you can use wasd to walk around and also got my head around the battling/leveling - pretty fun so far, not really feeling the story (a little too much this NPC needs this! this NPC needs that! go do this! go do that!) but I can easily see devoting the next month or so to beating it

but I am still on retardis so maybe the story'll get better once I get off the planet

i am reverenddollars on steam

New Steam UI beta is pretty.

Hey, bunch of random, interesting games just came out or are on sale through Steam/D2D. Anyone got any opinions on Zombie Driver, Dark Void Zero, The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom, or Beat Hazard?

The weekend deal for Codemasters arcade racer pack is pretty amazing...

Dirt for $2.50!!!
Grid for $6.24 - I used to hate this game, but have recently come around to it - bought it for $25.00 a few weeks ago ):
Toca 3 for $2.49 (online still works too)
Dirt 2 for $9.99

Shame I missed yr message Nhex, Not sure how cheap Zombie Driver was but when it was on sale at xmas I picked it up and definitely got my $2 or $5 or whatever's worth out of it. Great dumb fun for a short amt of time.

5 games, DRM free, Windows Mac or Linux, pay what you want http://www.wolfire.com/humble

World of Goo
Aquaria
Gish
Lugaru HD
Penumbra Overture

note that the charities are EFF and penny arcade's wankathon

After much struggle, I finished building my new PC last night. Still fooling around and trying stuff out. Did a stress test in CS:S with everything maxed 1600 x 900 (next I need a better monitor) and am pretty pleased with the results... 281.94 fps average! Mission accomplished...

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4007/4588080210_df80ac22c0_o.png

got Steam up on my Mac, d/l'ing Torchlight for Mac now!

I has a Steam now too!

Portal is free for MAC/PC until May 24th
Mac store... http://store.steampowered.com/browse/mac/

Does that mean you can keep playing it for free after the 24th?

Downloading Portal first - free is my ideal price point. Actually, $10 for Torchlight is also going to happen.

Overall Steam is a must for PC gamers. All the deals that they frequently have are ideal for gamers on a budget. Torchlight is an amazing game it' even worth the full price!

I haven't played any games on my computer except for Civ in years and years; Deus X and Fallout 2 were the last, I think. Really excited about this whole Steam thing.

hoping against hope that Civ IV will get SteamPlay

should've been obvious but i'm still shocked that the new Steam UI looks even nicer on Mac

hoping against hope that Civ IV will get SteamPlay

Euler, according to the store it has it
http://store.steampowered.com/app/3900/

ok i'm in

holy shit you're right
!!!!!

installing civ 4 is going to have to wait until i submit my thesis

hmm though, in my client Civ IV isn't showing up as available to d/l, so maybe it's forthcoming?

i suspect that there's still limitations on the current client, since TF2 is mysteriously missing from my games list (and all my other PC-only games and Valve games still show up)

my steam name is ezsnappin if anyone wants to be friends.

civ 4 is there in mine?

i'm mac btw

the ILG Steam group is here, btw...
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/ILG

just joined.

I joined too

from the looks of it you can buy civ 4 + all expansions + colonization (which sadly sucks) for 39.99. I own 3 of the 4 on pc and am debating getting all 4 for mac.

they were on sale for $7.50 total a few weeks ago

(maybe it was $10.)

yeah $40 is bullshit. bump this thread if they go one sale between now and the end of time tho.

any other games besides portal/tf2 and civ4 worth getting?

I am this close to deleting my windows 7 partition

ha ha, nice try steam, trying to get me to buy bejeweled 2.

I never expected Civ 4 to be one of the Steam Play ones (because of the different publishers for the Mac version - long delayed, happens to so many AAA Windows ports), now am kicking myself a little for not nabbing that sale a few weeks ago.

Civ 4 appears in my library but I can't d/l it yet.

haha last night Torchlight dl crapped out after 10 minutes, hung for the next 40 at 68%; this morning the whole thing dl'ed in about a minute.

nhex - stop kicking yourself...

However, it turns out that this functionality, referred to as Steam Play, doesn't always extend to all of one's past Steam PC purchases--if you bought a game on Steam PC before it was eligible, you may have to buy again if you want it on Steam Mac.

Thus far, only two of the fifty-plus offerings--Civilization IV: The Complete Edition and Fairway Solitaire--require existing Steam PC owners to rebuy them on Steam Mac if they were bought before "being eligible for Steam Play support (May 12th, 2010)."

Reversed?
http://store.steampowered.com/news/3827/

hmm... in that case resume kicking (actually I don't like Civ, but I guess that's another story).

I'm now able to d/l Civ IV in Steam Mac---it's kinda huge so obv. I can't test it yet...pure excitement however

This week's Mac additions on Steam (on sale):

Killing Floor
Altitude (Free weekend)
Madballs in Babo: Invasion

Also:
Sam & Max Season 2
Windowsill
Hearts of Iron III
Chains
Caster
Simplz Zoo
Eschalon Book I

what's up w/all-stars throwing up duds this year, first tremé now alpha protocol :_(

I worked on this game (a fact of which I am not proud). I'm not here to defend it; I agree with all these reviews.

First, a comment for the guy at Cheesecake Factory - Most devs eat in the office most days, if they do go out they tend to grab something at the food court and head back. I know the execs take long lunches, but they often use them for informal meetings as well. Most of the programmers and designers very rarely ate outside the office during the time I was on this project.

There was a ton of work put into this game. The problem is that is was a ton of undirected work, or work on things that were just stupid. The Executive Producer for the game, Chris Parker (also an owner of the company), seemed to think he was the world's greatest designer ever, and created all these absolutely shitty systems and wouldn't listen to any of the real designers or devs about things that just didn't work. And you can't exactly argue with one of the owners of the company when he doesn't want to listen. He basically took over the game and dictated exactly how everything would work (or not work, as the case may be). The other producers realized this early on and just gave up, leaving Parker to micromanage all the designers and programmers directly.

Sega also was a factor, because they kept changing the design requirements (yes they had heavy influence there), which never gave the producers and designers time to actually decide on one set of features to make and polish. The blame is still mostly Obsidian's because the execution was absolutely terrible, and it was obvious 2 years ago that this game should have been scrapped. Instead, though, they focused on adding still more features and never fixed the ones they already had. That is a recipe for tons of bugs and no polish... as is obvious.

This game was just an absolute failure of production, and it's no wonder that so many of the developers left the company, even after the 40% staff layoffs. I am still happy about some of Obsidian's other current projects, New Vegas included, because they are going pretty well. Their big unannounced project is looking great and is already much better than AP ever was, and that may end up being the game that everyone was looking for with AP.

Sega should have canceled AP instead of Aliens...